The difficult with all design is correlating the topology, the components choices, the operating points, and the sound quality. That's hard. This took more than five years, and I could only had gotten through it if you were crazy!

I do hope you find this the preamp you'll ever heard, Merry Xmas to you and your family!

That's a great way to put it Jens. I said 'natural' but your terminology says it better methinks. Personally, the difference of adding in the GK2 for me was an unexpected epiphany that suddenly my system felt and sounded complete at long last. That feeling continues, I have no current desire to upgrade anything - just to put on another LP or CD.

Unfortunately, I did not get that much listening done over Christmas because of a lot of social activities, so I do not really have much new to add at this point.

One thing, though: I use the GK-2 also as part of my home cinema system, and I have noticed a clear improvement in clarity of speech (not using a centre speaker, just the two stereo speakers). Apart from that, movie sound has obviously also moved a couple of notches upwards!

I am currently doing some changes to my system that will allow the GK-2 to really show what it can do. Once I have implemented these changes and done a fair amount of post-change listening, I should be able to provide some more detailed impressions

More later!

Cheers,

Jens

__________________
"Life is too short for over-expensive hi-fi pretending to be high-end"

Well, I got a bit of a surprise - or perhaps more of an eye opener - last night.

I sat down to listen leisurely to a couple of CDs, but it soon became evident that there would be nothing leisurely about this listening at all!

Chance had it that I had chosen a couple CDs that I hadn't played since before I implemented the GK-2. And I need to mention that these CDs were by no means special audiophile stuff or anything, just some more or less ordinary pop/rock, but also CDs that I have played hundreds of times before and know extremely well.

Therefore, it also came as a revelation to me that they sounded very different - and then again, not. Let me explain: The very different things are the layering, texture, and detail, which are hugely different (= improved) over the GK-1. Especially the layering and detail are so much better than I was used to. Even the tiniest details get to have their place in the sound image, and texture is improved as well, rendering more "air" around instruments, voices etc.
And then, what is not changed is the music (thank you for this!) and musicality (even more foot-tapping than before).

So, what the GK-2 did last night was to take two seemingly "stock" recordings and raise them to a new level. It simply turned out that there were previously unearthed things in these recordings that the GK-2 managed to dig out.

Guys, this is no small feat!

Applause, Hugh, applause!

Cheers,

Jens

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"Life is too short for over-expensive hi-fi pretending to be high-end"

The 'audiophile qualities' are difficult to put into words, and people put their other perspective to them anyway. But the qualities of detail, texture and layering are well enough recognised, as are 'depth of image'. In my design, which took many years, I was mindful of those qualities, but significantly almost NONE of them are captivated with measurements, which is very difficult and makes this pursuit art as well as engineering.

Thank you for your post, it helps a lot of people who are interested in the GK2.....

Therefore, it also came as a revelation to me that they sounded very different - and then again, not. Let me explain: The very different things are the layering, texture, and detail, which are hugely different (= improved) over the GK-1. Especially the layering and detail are so much better than I was used to. Even the tiniest details get to have their place in the sound image, and texture is improved as well, rendering more "air" around instruments, voices etc.
And then, what is not changed is the music (thank you for this!) and musicality (even more foot-tapping than before).

So, what the GK-2 did last night was to take two seemingly "stock" recordings and raise them to a new level. It simply turned out that there were previously unearthed things in these recordings that the GK-2 managed to dig out.

Guys, this is no small feat!

Applause, Hugh, applause!

Cheers,

Jens

I have been listening to this since September 2011. I never wrote it up this good, but these words are what I intended to write - to Hugh at the very first and also in my first posts here.
The GK-2 is a big step up from the GK-1.